Not a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer

January 21, 2016 — Laura

With this many mistakes in a single sentence, it’s a safe bet that this Yahoo! Style writer won’t be winning any journalism prizes:

emmy-award sty

I gotta give her credit for trying to use a hyphen, though she got that wrong. It should be Emmy Award-winning. It’s downhill from there: that was featured should be who were featured. Although it’s not grammatically incorrect to refer to human beings with that, it is considered impolite; that’s why she should have used who. And was featured is grammatically horrific since its subject is powerhouses. Finally, we have women in the TV, which may sound correct to those learning English. To the rest of us, it’s the worst.

Posted in Hyphens, Punctuation, Subject-Verb Agreement, Verbs, Wrong words. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

A word that’s not right

August 1, 2015 — Laura

English is funny. And challenging. It provides lots of words for lots of circumstances. But it’s also missing a few words that would be of benefit to writers and readers. One of those missing words is a possessive form of the word that. (Make that two missing words; which doesn’t have a possessive form either.) But that didn’t stop the writer for Yahoo! Autos from trying to come up with one — and failing:

car thats auto

The writer might have used whose: a car whose value is beginning to soar. But that might have set off alarm bells among grammarians who feel who and whose cannot be applied to non-humans. What’s a writer to do? Recast the sentence. One of these might have worked:

  • a car with a value that’s beginning to soar
  • when the car’s value is beginning to soar
  • a car the value of which is beginning to soar

Each of those options is slightly longer, slightly different in meaning, or slightly awkward. But none of those would have appeared in Terribly Write.

Posted in Possessives. Tags: , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment »

Who is a brand?

July 2, 2015 — Laura

There are more errors than you think that are on Yahoo! Style, including the use of who for a nonliving thing (twice!) and a holiday called Independence:

who sty

The pronoun who should be used only for people (and possibly animals with human-like characteristics); the correct word is that (in this excerpt) or which. The holiday the writer refers to is called Independence Day.

Posted in Wrong words. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , . 2 Comments »

Take a peek at this

January 4, 2015 — Laura

Take a peek at this capitalization (or rather, lack of capitalization) of Christmas on Yahoo! DIY:

blogs 1

Who doesn’t know to capitalize the holiday? The same person who doesn’t know that using that to refer to human beings is considered impolite. The pronoun who would be more to Emily Post’s liking.

blogs 2

Just one peek into this paragraph reminds us that the writer isn’t fond of capitalizing holidays like Valentine’s Day:

blogs 3

Or Mother Nature:

blogs 4

Reading that, you feel like you are really peeking into the mind of the writer, who has trouble picking the right homophone and who forgets to use an apostrophe to show that it’s kids’ art.

Posted in Apostrophes, Capitalizing, Confused Words, its/it's, peek/peak/pique, Possessives, Pronouns, Punctuation. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . 7 Comments »

Maybe Mitt Romney was right

July 11, 2014 — Laura

When Mitt Romney claimed during his bid for the presidency that “corporations are people, too,” he was met with derision. But he may have been right, if you believe what you read on the Yahoo! front page:

fp who for that

The pronoun who is reserved for human beings. Is yahoo.com alleging that companies are people? Or did the writer fail to realize that the correct pronoun is that?

Posted in Pronouns. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , . 3 Comments »

Time for a postmortem

September 24, 2013 — Laura

One way the folks at Yahoo! TV can improve the quality of writing on the site is to hold a postmortem review. After an article is published, the writers and editors would review it for things like misspellings:

post mortem tv

And review it for minor slips like using that (instead of who) to refer to a person. (I’m sure Yahoo!’s staffers know that it’s impolite to refer to a human being with that.) And minor gaffes like putting an apostrophe in Emmys:

that tv

And review it for typos:

is a star is a star tv

And check for grammatical errors, like the use of the indicative mood (like the verb was) when the subjunctive mood (were) is required:

tv was still alive

Maybe if they did a postmortem misspelled words wouldn’t show up twice in the same day, on the same page:

post mortem tv 2

Posted in Apostrophes, Misspellings, Plurals, Pronouns, Punctuation, Unnecessary Words, Verbs, Wrong words. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . 2 Comments »

The person who wrote this

October 4, 2012 — Laura

The person who wrote this on the Yahoo! front page wasn’t wrong according to some authorities:

Image

Depending on the source of your grammatical wisdom, referring to a person by the word that is wrong or  perfectly acceptable. I’ve always believed that it’s not wrong, just impolite. And sometimes it’s ambiguous. Had the writer used the pronoun who, instead of that, it would be clear that the star is a human being, and not Castor or Rigel, both stars in their own right, but in different constellations.

Posted in Pronouns, Wrong words. Tags: , , , , , , , . 1 Comment »

What is wrong with yahoo.com?

August 16, 2012 — Laura

There are always errors on the Yahoo! front page, but it seems that lately they have multiplied. Could the Internet giant be outsourcing the writing to a non-English-speaking country? Or are internal changes and a drop in stock price responsible? Terrible typos, capitalization catastrophes, grammatical goofs, wayward words, and pointless punctuation abound. What’s behind all the errors?

Even when the day isn’t going your way, don’t you think you should proofread to make sure you used the correct word?

Image

Even if you’re under a tight deadline, wouldn’t you check the capitalization of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s name?

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And couldn’t you do a quick read, just to see if you omitted a word?

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Don’t you think a professional journalist would know that Western is capitalized when it refers to a region of the United States?

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Shouldn’t you expect a writer or editor to know that the correct word is that, and not which? Wouldn’t you think that a writer would decide if Taliban is plural or singular, but not both?

Image

Couldn’t you spot a typo that never should have seen the light of day?

Image

Isn’t it common knowledge that an apostrophe isn’t used to create a plural of years or decades?

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What’s going on at yahoo.com? Or is this just what readers can expect from now on?

Posted in Apostrophes, Capitalizing, Confused Words, Missing Words, Plurals, Punctuation, that/which, Wrong words. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

What you need to know

July 17, 2012 — Laura

The most important thing to know about anything you read that was written by a Yahoo! staffer: Don’t believe it. You might assume because you read this on Yahoo! News that Dutch Ruppersberger is a Republican:

Image

He’s not. (He’s a Democrat.) And you might assume that there’s a hotel in Washington, DC called JW Marriot. There isn’t. (But there is a JW Marriott.) And you might assume that the writer is familiar with basic English grammar. He’s not. (That “program that” should be “program, which.”)

And that’s what you need to know.

Posted in Confused Words, Errors of Fact, Misspellings, that/which. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

Wait! Wait! It’s Nikki Tait

April 9, 2011 — Laura

The senior foreign affairs reporter for Yahoo! News‘ “The Envoy” made no effort to find the correct spelling of Nikki Tait’s name. (Seriously, you couldn’t Google her name?)

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That’s the worst of these errors. Sticklers for correct grammar know that the correct word is that and not which and that the adverbs extremely domestically (which both modify unpopular) are awkward.

Posted in Adverbs, Confused Words, Misspellings, Modifiers, that/which, Wrong words. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »
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